[S_U_N]

Originally Posted by civic-sense

Many thanks for the feedback. My friend is a casual viewer but after reading the above, I wouldn't recommend him to buy the Philips. Especially since he would be playing downloaded movies via the USB port.

He was willing to spend up to 50K but I was fixated with the 3 year warranty thing. Probably I'd ask him to get the Samsung and spend some money to get an extended warranty from Croma.

Thanks again.

You still have a way out with the Phillips TV, if it is the decoder issue.
Get a Raspberry Pi and provide Internet connectivity to it to gather media information. Connect this to your Phillips TV via HDMI.
Secondly, get all your movies/ videos onto a hard disk (USB or network).
Once you make the connection and let is scan for media, you are all set.
The Raspberry Pi will do the video and audio processing for you. The TV will just act as a display. You can connect your 2.1 speakers to your Raspberry Pi if you want better sound.
The whole setup without the hard disk will cost you less than Rs. 4000.

[civic-sense]

Originally Posted by S_U_N

You still have a way out with the Phillips TV, if it is the decoder issue.
Get a Raspberry Pi and provide Internet connectivity to it to gather media information. Connect this to your Phillips TV via HDMI.
Secondly, get all your movies/ videos onto a hard disk (USB or network).
Once you make the connection and let is scan for media, you are all set.
The Raspberry Pi will do the video and audio processing for you. The TV will just act as a display. You can connect your 2.1 speakers to your Raspberry Pi if you want better sound.
The whole setup without the hard disk will cost you less than Rs. 4000.

Well, a WD TV Live is a better proposition, I guess. I have that and it plays almost everything you throw at it and with amazing picture quality. But then my friend isn't that tech savvy to meddle with that many wires. He would be happier if it is as easy as plug a USB on the TV and play. And as I said above, he isn't too much worried about the price, and am sure he'd keep his TV for at least 5 years.

BTW, I have a MK802 IV APC stick with which I tried playing some movies, but the picture quality was real bad.

[gendarmee]

Current Panel: LG LH90. Running well since 2009 (except for one LCD replacement courtesy a faulty hathway set top box).

Requirement: A panel for the bedroom. Can some one suggest a 40-50 inch IPS LCD with backlit LED? I tried researching but wasn't even able to find the backlight type on most manufacturer websites.

thanks

[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by civic-sense

Well, a WD TV Live is a better proposition, I guess. I have that and it plays almost everything you throw at it and with amazing picture quality. But then my friend isn't that tech savvy to meddle with that many wires. He would be happier if it is as easy as plug a USB on the TV and play. And as I said above, he isn't too much worried about the price, and am sure he'd keep his TV for at least 5 years.

BTW, I have a MK802 IV APC stick with which I tried playing some movies, but the picture quality was real bad.

Try MX player. Rikumagic players usually work best with MX player software.

[sandeepmohan]

Originally Posted by civic-sense

Many thanks for the feedback.

You are welcome.

Originally Posted by civic-sense

Especially since he would be playing downloaded movies via the USB port.

I have a previous generation Western Digital Live Tv. I use this for watching movies and you tube content. Much better than using the Tv's on board usb port. The internal usb port also kills the sound to the extent that your volume can be 100% and you still can't hear anything.

Please check usb playback on the tv you/your friend is buying. Check it via the tv's usb ports. What I have noticed is, while video plays well without any damage done to the content via the internal hardware decoders on the tv (Not the case with Videocon), audio is rubbish. I was forced to purchase a HT as I could not hear anything.

Originally Posted by civic-sense

He was willing to spend up to 50K but I was fixated with the 3 year warranty thing.

Warranty is very important. The life of these panels are unpredictable. Even if its costs up to Rs. 10k for a two year cover, I will take it. Panel replacement for a colleagues 40" 5 Series Samsung, which died right after warranty, was 23k.

I know about the Philips because the same colleague bought one from Flipkart just a week ago, on exchange of the partial working Samsung he had and has now returned it citing poor picture quality with standard definition content. When I heard this, I knew this was a clone of the Videocon I have. Even the Philips engineer who visited admitted that the tv was not great. The good people at Fk have agreed to a refund.

Originally Posted by civic-sense

Probably I'd ask him to get the Samsung and spend some money to get an extended warranty from Croma.

I would make a call to Samsung support or whatever that brand is your friend would like to buy, specify the model and check if extended warranty cover is available. Some model's do not have the option of extended warranty.

I bought a Samsung Plasma 3 years ago and to be safe wanted to take extended warranty but it was not possible.

Originally Posted by gendarmee

Can some one suggest a 40-50 inch IPS LCD with backlit LED?

I do not know much about backlit led. The Panasonic TH-50A410D is IPS and good value at 58k. No bells and whistles. Its just a Tv.

http://www.panasonic.com/in/consumer...h-50a410d.html

[civic-sense]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

You are welcome.



I have a previous generation Western Digital Live Tv. I use this for watching movies and you tube content. Much better than using the Tv's on board usb port. The internal usb port also kills the sound to the extent that your volume can be 100% and you still can't hear anything.

My LG LCD has a USB port and I use it to play almost all regional movies and English HD movies too. I use my WD TV Live only when I have to play movies with DTS encoded audio. I have the audio out (S/PDIF) wired to my Onlyo HT. But the TVs speakers do a decent job with all the run-of-the-mill stuff presumably because the TV does not use a LED backlight and is hence thicker allowing them to use bigger speakers. Modern thin LED TVs have horrible sound, my Dad's Sony LED TV sounds tinny.

Please check usb playback on the tv you/your friend is buying. Check it via the tv's usb ports. What I have noticed is, while video plays well without any damage done to the content via the internal hardware decoders on the tv (Not the case with Videocon), audio is rubbish. I was forced to purchase a HT as I could not hear anything.

I have advised him to take a variety of content with him. A mistake I did while buying my LG was that I just took a small HD music video (Waka waka) with me and when it played well, I went ahead with it. It was later that I realized that the LGs don't have DTS decoder. Worse, they don't even pass through the DTS audio.

Warranty is very important. The life of these panels are unpredictable. Even if its costs up to Rs. 10k for a two year cover, I will take it. Panel replacement for a colleagues 40" 5 Series Samsung, which died right after warranty, was 23k.

I know about the Philips because the same colleague bought one from Flipkart just a week ago, on exchange of the partial working Samsung he had and has now returned it citing poor picture quality with standard definition content. When I heard this, I knew this was a clone of the Videocon I have. Even the Philips engineer who visited admitted that the tv was not great. The good people at Fk have agreed to a refund.

No LCD TV seems to get upscaling SD content right. Most of the time what we watch is SD content, so how the TV handles SD content is very important. I think, the bigger you go SD quality suffers. My Panasonic 32 HD LCD used to handle SD better than my LG 42 Full HD.

I would make a call to Samsung support or whatever that brand is your friend would like to buy, specify the model and check if extended warranty cover is available. Some model's do not have the option of extended warranty.

I bought a Samsung Plasma 3 years ago and to be safe wanted to take extended warranty but it was not possible.

Croma used to have a warranty thing of their own. I had bought it for my Samsung microwave. How it works is, they have tie-up with generic service centers and the charges are billed to Croma. I was skeptical while buying, but it did work fine. Twice we availed services and both times the system worked. I would ask him to check directly with Samsung too.

Thanks!

[reignofchaos]

Upscaling SD content is a non issue really if you use any HD Set top box which outputs HDMI. The upscaling for SD channels will then be done by the STB.

As for downloaded content, built a cheap HTPC, get a decent AMD/NVIDIA graphics card and use the madVR renderer - this is probably the best upscaling you'll get irrespective of how much money you throw at it.

TV upscaling chips are cheap and best avoided - unless you buy a high end samsung which does it right.

[civic-sense]

Originally Posted by reignofchaos

Upscaling SD content is a non issue really if you use any HD Set top box which outputs HDMI. The upscaling for SD channels will then be done by the STB.

As for downloaded content, built a cheap HTPC, get a decent AMD/NVIDIA graphics card and use the madVR renderer - this is probably the best upscaling you'll get irrespective of how much money you throw at it.

TV upscaling chips are cheap and best avoided - unless you buy a high end samsung which does it right.

I do have a Dish HD set top box, and while it does a better job than the TV, the quality is not up there.

I did go the HTPC way before I went with the WD TV player (first gen) and while it was fun building it up, it became a PITA later. It took a lot of space, made a lot of noise and took time to boot up etc. And every day I found myself solving some issue of the other. It was a relief when I shifted to WD. It was like freedom bought for 5K.

[reignofchaos]

Originally Posted by civic-sense

I do have a Dish HD set top box, and while it does a better job than the TV, the quality is not up there.

I did go the HTPC way before I went with the WD TV player (first gen) and while it was fun building it up, it became a PITA later. It took a lot of space, made a lot of noise and took time to boot up etc. And every day I found myself solving some issue of the other. It was a relief when I shifted to WD. It was like freedom bought for 5K.

If you have an HD STB, there's no option at all to upscale on the TV cos the box will be outputting 1080i or 1080p depending on the box. The TV might have to do deinterlacing.

As for HTPC, mine is the size of a shoe box, has a low profile GPU, a low profile silent heat sink and an i3 CPU with a geforce GT 730 graphics card. For slow boot issues, get an SSD. Windows 7 boots in <10 seconds with an SSD and win8 is even faster. The video output quality of a well setup HTPC absolutely kills these WDTV and similar boxes. Also it can decode HEVC(h.265) on the GPU which pretty much none of these boxes can.

[civic-sense]

Originally Posted by reignofchaos

If you have an HD STB, there's no option at all to upscale on the TV cos the box will be outputting 1080i or 1080p depending on the box. The TV might have to do deinterlacing.

As for HTPC, mine is the size of a shoe box, has a low profile GPU, a low profile silent heat sink and an i3 CPU with a geforce GT 730 graphics card. For slow boot issues, get an SSD. Windows 7 boots in <10 seconds with an SSD and win8 is even faster. The video output quality of a well setup HTPC absolutely kills these WDTV and similar boxes. Also it can decode HEVC(h.265) on the GPU which pretty much none of these boxes can.

Well, I built mine some time in 2008/9 had an ATX MB and hence was quite large. I used to keep it beside the sub. Then I moved to a micro-ATX (?) and kept it on top of the receiver. Was still too big for my liking. I am sure things have shrunken of late. I have grand plans for a new living room, so I'd definitely experiment with another HTPC.

[Quarter Mile]

Any user experience reviews on the MicroMax 50incher. These 50inchers are currently being sold around the 34k range on flipkart etc. 34k for a 50" LED is definitely VFM. A couple of me friends have got this and they speak good about this TV.

[ottocycle]

Any idea about Vu TVs. I am to buy a good TV (46'-50') in two-three months.

Looks like Vu has launched around 15 models with price ranging from 9k to 9L according to this link. They are exclusively selling it on flipkart. They also claim about having A+ grade panels and claim that only 15% of TVs are currently being sold with A+ grade panels.

They are prices are looking very attractive and they seem feature packed.

[harry10]

Originally Posted by Quarter Mile

Any user experience reviews on the MicroMax 50incher. These 50inchers are currently being sold around the 34k range on flipkart etc. 34k for a 50" LED is definitely VFM. A couple of me friends have got this and they speak good about this TV.

My friend bought a 40 inch Led for 24k.
I checked it out an picture quality is good. Not in the league of Samsung and Sony but definitely worth the money. Do test it out with HD stuff before buying.

[SchumiFan]

Bhpians,

I need some assistance in trouble shooting an issue with my LG LED TV (42").

It was bought back in July 2013 and was working fine until last night. This morning when I switched it on, it was showing pictures normally until it started flickering upwards periodically. It is a very visible flickering akin to what happens when we use to 'tune' for channels in our old CRT TVs.

I switched off the whole set and restarted it again to see if it resolved the issue. But no hope.

Initially thought it was the DTH that was not working right but upon switching inputs, came to the realization that it was the TV.

I have it connected to a Belkin spike buster along with a Bose TV speaker and PS3. No issue of any rains/lightning in my area last night.

Anyone faced this issue before and hopefully has a solution for it?

[tsk1979]

Looking for a low IQ TV with decent sound and picture quality.
Is this good?
http://www.shopclues.com/samsung-40h...Q&gclsrc=aw.ds

29K only for 40"

What else do you recommend.
My LG 32" (about 8 years old) has turned into a buzzing bumblebee and even the panel is showing signs of decay with yellow blue colors. I think come capacitors are shot.

I would like a 35-40" TV for around 35K max, and should have headphone out.